LOS ANGELES—Arriving for the third performance of LA Opera’s current run of Verdi’s Rigoletto on June 12 felt like entering an updated authoritarian Mantua in the twilight zone. The streets were almost deserted, as an 8 p.m. … » Read

Italian Baroque composer Alessandro Stradella is known to many a young voice student for a single song, “Pietà, Signore,” included in a classic G. Schirmer anthology 24 Italian Songs and Arias . Some musicians may recognize him … » Read

Claire Chase’s Density 2036 selections, [ covered in Part I ], were tied into the sprawling overall themes of Ojai Festival 2025: music in everyday places; the intermingling of music and environment; the processes of ritual over vast … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—“You have a great orchestra—take good care of it,” Esa-Pekka Salonen exhorted the capacity crowd at Davies Symphony Hall on June 14, following a 15-minute wave of jubilant applause and earsplitting cheers. … » Read

OJAI, CA  – The Ojai Music Festival lately has been swinging from one extreme to another as its music-directors-du-jour pass through the revolving door. The eclectic world-folk-based Rhiannon Giddens festival of 2023 gave way to the … » Read

Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, kicking off the second leg of a  Korea-Japan tour, greeted Tokyo with a novelty and two warhorses. The June 3 Suntory Hall concert, conducted by NACO Music Director Alexander Shelley, opened … » Read

LONDON—When The Soldier’s Tale premiered in 1918, it was admired not just for Stravinsky’s pungent score and idiosyncratic orchestration but for the innovative way it blended spoken narrative with a suite of baroque-inflected … » Read

CHICAGO—It’s become one of the most frequently repeated stories in classical music. In 1933, Florence Price became the first Black woman to have a piece played by a major American symphony orchestra—the Chicago Symphony. But the … » Read

CHICAGO—The inaugural performance of She Who Dared Tuesday night, a powerful new opera by composer Jasmine Arielle Barnes and librettist Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton, was not your usual world premiere. The cast of Chicago Opera Theater's  … » Read

SAN FRANCISCO—On the afternoon of June 1, Opera Parallèle’s production of Harvey Milk Reimagined was nearly upstaged by vintage news footage of the man himself, the San Francisco lawmaker and gay activist murdered by fellow … » Read